Electronic Health Records

Does your doctor take out a file with envelopes and notes when accessing your health records or do they use a computer? More than likely, they are now using a computer.

Electronic health records

Recently medial professionals have been implementing software called EHR (Electric Health Records). This has become more and more common. The percentage of office-based physicians who use EHR software stood at 57 percent in 2011, which increased from 50.7 percent in 2010.

Electronic records good news for patients

This, incidentally, is good news for patients. We’d like our doctors to be organized. We want them to have the ability to access key health information quickly. With health-record data stored in computers, they can do this. They won’t need to fumble through heaps of paper to find our medical histories, what sorts of medication we are allergic to, and whether we’ve gained 15 pounds since our last visit. This information will all be available at the touch of a keyboard. EHR systems can also shorten the wait times that we face when we visit our doctor’s offices. If doctors aren’t wasting time shuffling through paperwork, they can spend more time visiting with patients and diagnosing them, all the while seeing patients in a more effective manner.

Federal government encouragement

The government is even behind the movement to digital documentation. The government is also encouraging physicians to file their prescription information electronically instead of by hand. This, too, is smart; pharmacists are more likely to make prescription medication mistakes when they’re attempting to read the often-incomprehensible handwriting of doctors. If they can access prescriptions electronically through their computers, the possibility of mistakes falls considerably.